Big Business and the Wealth of Nations

Book Overview

Written in non-technical terms, this book explains how the dynamics of big business have influenced national and international economies. A path-breaking study, it provides the first systematic treatment of big business in advanced, emerging, and centrally-planned economies from the late nineteenth century, when big businesses first appeared in American and West European manufacturing, to the present. Large industrial enterprises play a vital role in developing new technologies and commercializing new products in all of the major countries. How such firms emerged and evolved in different economic, political, and social settings constitutes a significant part of twentieth-century world history. This historical review of big business is particularly valuable today, when the viability of large enterprises is being challenged by small firms, networks, and alliances. These essays, written by internationally-known historians and economists, help one understand the essential role and functions of big business.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521663474
• ISBN13: 9780521663472
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 612 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Essential

This is a book that every person interested in entrepreneurial history should read. Directed, among others, by Alfred Chandler, the father of the discipline as it is now, it provides an overview of the different cultural and institutional backgrounds that make possible -or don't- entrepreneurship in many countries.

I don't agree with all its conclusions, but

...I can't argue with thee diligence of the scholars who contributed to this volume.Readers should be warned. If this is your first attempt at studying industrial history, it is difficult going. It is not really "economics" in the usual way. Nor is it history as you have usually read it.It is a series of case studies about the industrial development of nations all over the world, aimed at supporting some very controversial theses about what does and what does not work toward that end.